As is well known, the development of an autonomous vehicle as well as an advanced drive assistance system (ADAS) has been actively conducted. For the development, information about the environment around a vehicle is fundamentally required. The information about the environment around a vehicle may include information on distances from the vehicle to surrounding vehicles, information on traffic lights of nearby intersections, road information and the like.
Currently, in order to gather information about the surroundings (environment) of a vehicle, a method of gathering information about the surroundings of a vehicle using a laser scanner and an image sensor mounted on the vehicle is used. Such a method is usually utilized when an autonomous vehicle is developed.
Patent Document 1: Korean Patent Laid-open Publication No. 2001-0111141 (published on Dec. 17, 2001)
In the conventional method, however, the sensor may be influenced by the state of the surroundings of the vehicle. Therefore, the reliability of gathered information may be degraded. For example, since the image sensor may be influenced by the position of the sun, required information may be not gathered.
Furthermore, when a sensor is covered by foreign matter or obstacles, information cannot be gathered. For example, when foreign matter adheres to the front surface of the laser scanner, the laser scanner may output an abnormal sensing result. Furthermore, when information on a traffic light at an intersection is intended to be gathered through the image sensor, the traffic light may be blocked by a tall vehicle such as a bus or truck. In this case, it is impossible to gather signal information through the image sensor.